4 months in the past, I launched the In Growth publication with a query: With the leisure business in disaster, what ought to we do subsequent?
Since then, we’ve explored:
• The making and promoting of vertical movies
• Filmmakers getting cash from wealthy individuals
• A pay-to-play mannequin which may make sense
• How filmmakers can personal their launch methods
• How crews are studying to assume like influencers
• Why dwelling lean is enterprise technique
This week asks one thing totally different:
What in case your success as a filmmaker is tied to the energy of your private group?
That feels like (and doubtless is) the very first thing you’d hear at a TED Speak, adopted by trenchant anecdotes and considerate homilies. I supply neither, and I’m the type of one that cringes a bit at “private group,” however nonetheless I persist:
What if traders or consumers valued your venture not solely on story, solid, manufacturing workforce, and director CV — but in addition on the collective worth of the communities they dropped at the desk?
I’m not speaking about Instagram followers (although you’d most likely have these, too). I imply the flexibility to show there’s a set of people with a particular affinity in your work and for one another.
We already know what this seems to be like: It’s what constructed Comedian-Con and the franchises that fill it. However what if that very same logic utilized to you—an indie filmmaker, fledgling producer, actor, or cinematographer?
I consider that is what occurs subsequent.
Enter the Affinity Financial system
It already has a reputation — the Affinity Financial system — and credit score goes to Evan Shapiro, a former TV government with a expertise for inhaling large quantities of knowledge to establish what’s already true however not but declared.
Two years in the past, Shapiro rattled legacy-media executives at world convention IBC when he declared they now operated in a creator financial system.
“I appeared on the room and I stated, ‘That is the second in time the place you’re going to have to vary every part or exit of enterprise,’” he stated in a current video submit, shortly earlier than he took the stage at IBC 2025. “It pissed off lots of people within the room to the purpose that there have been a bunch of harrumphing outdated males who obtained up and left.”
At this time, YouTube is the number-one tv channel and the creator financial system is a given, like gravity. Shapiro’s now moved on: He describes the Affinity Financial system as “a brand new ecosystem the place mainstream media and the creator financial system have collided and melded and was a Frankenstein monster.”
The Affinity Financial system doesn’t care for those who’re indie or blockbuster, theatrical or TikTok. It doesn’t notably care about likes, which might be informal or purchased. It’s all concerning the factor that may’t be faked or AI’d: the group your work creates or conjures up.
The Reception
When Shapiro returned to IBC this September, viewers response was starkly totally different.
“The reception was very optimistic—from the individuals within the viewers, from the organizers, and from the individuals who pay to fund the convention,” he wrote me. “It was a bit overwhelming tbh… I additionally had the chance to ask a large pattern of delegates about what they’d most wish to rework if they might. The overwhelming reply—greater than 2/3—was to shift from the vision-less CFO centric tradition within the business and return to imaginative and prescient and mission. This was throughout media and tech. Massive firms and small.”
That’s encouraging information in a world the place Paramount is getting ready to swallow Warner Bros. Discovery entire.
The Affinity Financial system is an aspiring buzzword, however there’s proof that its actuality is already right here. Once I spoke with Cineverse exec Erick Opeka final week about MicroCo, we talked concerning the upcoming LA vertical drama market and its fan occasion VertiCon, which is inspiring attendance from as far-off as Australia.
Why It Issues
Extra importantly, he stated, that devotion can translate on to {dollars}. If microdrama star Kasey Esser exhibits that his followers convert into paying clients, he can get more cash… from firms like MicroCo.
“In the event that they construct their very own franchises, if they’ve their very own characters and get fashionable,” Opeka stated, “they’re going to demand it they usually’re going to get it.”
In different phrases: Those that can convert followers into viewers will win. Nevertheless, that additionally calls for younger creators begin constructing a fanbase now — earlier than they’ve made the massive sale, or any sale; presumably even earlier than they’re actually good.
That’s some exhausting work, however beneath the Affinity Financial system it’s important — not just for future returns, however as a result of group is the one metric that issues.
How to try this? That’s a future difficulty of In Growth.
✉️ Have an concept, praise, or criticism?
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